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Was Cambodia's Khmer Rouge Tribunal Worth the Effort? The View of an Anthropological Witness
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
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In September 2022, the curtains at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal in Cambodia opened for the last time. Given the hundreds of millions spent, long delays, few trials, and non-stop controversies, many people wonder if the tribunal was worth the time, money, and effort. This essay describes three perspectives on the tribunals, two negative (purist and progressivist perspectives) and one more positive (the pragmatist perspective). The author then discusses why, despite the tribunal's shortcomings, he agreed to testify as an expert witness, an experience recounted in his recently published book, Anthropological Witness: Lessons from the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (Cornell University Press, 2022).
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